Carth:texting or emailing while driving should result in an instant 90 day license suspension if caught. If you have extenuating circumstances let a judge decide if it was worth risking everyone around you.

newsletter, more of the same, etcetera.

neuroflare:So I'm endangering everyone around me by changing the the internet radio station or downloading a podcast or reading a web comic while I'm stopped at a red light huh?

while stopped at a red light? obviously you're retarded, so yes, you are an endangerment.

elchupacabra:And yet vehicle mortality rates are declining, when cell phone use is increasing -- just a quick GIS shows that. And we still try to justify increasing penalties for something that's NOT THAT DANGEROUS. Congratulations on fattening our police budget.

Carth:texting or emailing while driving should result in an instant 90 day license suspension if caught. If you have extenuating circumstances let a judge decide if it was worth risking everyone around you.

It's interesting. However how many of these people are doing these things manually vs the number who have their phone sat doing 'something' and background tasks are running?

For example, my partner will use her phone as a satnav, it pulls traffic updates down via the data connection (i.e. 'accesses the web'), often on long trips the podcast player will automatically download new items and we may of bolted it to the cars audio system to stream some music. It's perfectly possible that is she gave a damn about Facebook that it's app would also be using the GPS system and randomly update her status with where she is/what she's doing.

But at no point has the phone been manually told to do any of this by her whilst she is driving. So whilst it's fascinating the questions as posed in the article could be quite misleading when dealing with modern smartphones.